Colorants are used to provide permanent, semi-permanent, and temporary color to personal care products for the hair and skin. Often, the colorants used are dyes, which can stain or color the desired substrate. In many applications, staining is undesirable which limits the use of dyes. Therefore, dyes are typically converted to lakes which render the dye mostly insoluble. However, in the presence of water or another suitable solvent, some of the dye is leached from the lake leaving the same staining potential. Other strategies have been used to immobilize colorants such as encapsulation, but none of these strategies are entirely effective.
Permanent and semi permanent hair dyes use gloves and other means to avoid staining the skin. These permanent and semi permanent dyes will provide a lasting color to the skin. This is in contrast to many dyes, which provide only a temporary or transient staining. However, this transient stain is still perceivable by consumers. Thus, there still exists a need to reduce or mitigate the temporary staining such that the consumer can wipe the product off their skin, hair, and nails and leave no noticeable stain prior to washing.